Yascha Mounk Substack

Yascha and Freya discuss why so many young people came to prefer the online world to real life.

I think the biggest kind of sentiment I want to get across in terms of what social media is doing is this sense of loss, that my generation has lost something. Love has completely changed. Friendship has completely changed. Social media creates the illusion that you’re in touch with people; you see people posting their Instagram stories, you see their relationship updates and it provides people with this sense that they’re connecting and they’re interacting even though, really, it’s somewhat of an illusion.

nd people didn’t anticipate the extent to which people would forfeit the real world for these online connections, especially young people who haven’t really grown up with a real sense of community. A lot of them haven’t grown up with real deep friendships. They haven’t known the alternative. And so when you provide them with these online communities, online friends, it might seem like a great thing. But, unfortunately, they compare that to the real world, which is full of friction, of rejection, and the social anxiety that comes from that. The online world seems much more compelling. I think we underestimated the extent to which people would choose that over reality.